The ALSWEB Framework: A Web-based Framework for the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily Project

In this work the ALSWEB framework is presented. The ALSWEB is a virtual linguistic laboratory for linguistic research developed as a web application. The purpose of the framework is to model the entire process regarding the different steps of data acquisition, data transformation, information acquisition from different data and research hypotheses verification in the ALS (Linguistic Atlas of Sicily) project. The nature of the ALS research involves different type of data. The socio-linguistic researcher that is the main actor of the proposed framework has to acquire information in many formats: multimedia data, audio data, question-answer (textual) from particular questionnaires. In this work the overall framework is presented and the major issues in the definition of a complex web-based framework are explained. The produced results are very valuable for linguists working on Linguistic Atlas of Sicily, and they are used to generate statistics on linguistic phenomena and geographical location. The obtained results are very encouraging in the success of an hybridization between different scientific and cultural domains pertaining to the project in order to participate to the constitution of the core of a local humanities computing community.

I. Introduction

This paper presents a novel framework definition in the field of linguistic research. The purpose of the framework is to model the entire process regarding the different steps of data acquisition, data transformation, information acquisition from different data and research hypotheses verification.